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“Are you certain you want me to display my prowess?” he asked.

She forced herself to stay in place, resisting the urge to lean back or—even worse—surge up and pull him to her.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

He dropped to his knees. Slowly, he took her wineglass from her and set it on the table.

A bubble of tension welled up in her throat, and she blurted out, “Where was it that you acquired this skill?”

Amusement lit his eyes. “The skill you accuse me of boasting about without any grounds?”

She bit her lip as he picked up a bit of her skirt in his fingers and rubbed the wool together as though testing the softness of it.

“I don’t want to answer that question right now, Ina.”

“Why not?” she asked. The rules were different for unmarried gentlemen. While she couldn’t suffer even the faintest blemish on her reputation, it was different for him. An enterprising young man could find ways of ensuring that he was divested of his virginity well before he saw the marriage bed.

What if the woman from the letters taught him?

Her stomach sank at the thought.

Gavin let her skirt go and watched the fabric balloon out and settle against her leg once again. “Discussing other women is the very last thing I wish to do with you right now.”

Her mouth formed an O but this time no sound slipped out, for he’d placed a hand on her skirt-covered knee and was skimming it down the top of her leg toward her foot. Every nerve in her body lit up like fireworks, and she had to repress a gasp. Where there’d been desperation and hunger when he’d grabbed her in his room, now there was only focus—intoxicating, intense focus.

His fingers lit beneath her hem again before circling her ankle. “Under other circumstances, this would be happening in a different order,” he said.

“Different?” she asked, her breath quickening.

“Your boots would come off first,” he said, letting go of her ankle only to lift the hem of her dress and display the polished but well-worn black leather of her boots. They were flecked with mud and pieces of grass that had stuck to them when they’d crossed the island. There was nothing alluring about workaday boots, but Gavin was looking at them as though they were made of the purest gold cloth.

It was on the tip of her tongue to order him to take them off, but instead she murmured, “What’s next?”

His hand lighted on the top of her foot, where her laces were snugly tied. But rather than pulling one end free, he skimmed his palm up over her stocking-clad calf.

“There are so many layers to a lady’s clothes,” he said.

“That’s not an answer.” She barely managed to get the words out as he slowly glided his fingers up her leg.

He chuckled. “No, it’s not, but I’m trying to help you understand a gentleman’s dilemma. There’s your dress.”

The hem scooted up another couple of inches, exposing more of the innocent little flowers that ran down the length of her stocking.

“But divesting a lady of her dress so early would be rushing. I prefer a more subtle touch.”

He caressed the roundness of her knee, and her hips arched a fraction of an inch to press her leg more fully into his palm.

“I wouldn’t have thought that removing a lady’s garter with your teeth would call for subtlety,” she gasped out.

He stroked his fingers over the back of her knee. “It doesn’t.”

“Then why do it?” she asked, praying he’d move his damned hand up a little farther. God, that was all she wanted in the world at that moment. Just a few inches higher.

“It’s nothing more than a distraction that’s supposed to testify to a gentleman’s skill in bed.”

His second hand joined the first under her skirts. Petticoat, crinoline, and chemise were bunching up around her waist, and she must have looked like wantonness personified, but she didn’t care so long as he didn’t stop.

“I learned when I was a much younger man,” he said.